An Organizational Account of Biological Functions - HAL-SHS - Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société Access content directly
Journal Articles British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Year : 2009

An Organizational Account of Biological Functions

Abstract

In this paper, we develop an organizational account that defines biological functions as causal relations subject to closure in living systems, interpreted as the most typical example of organizationally closed and differentiated self-maintaining systems. We argue that this account adequately grounds the teleological and normative dimensions of functions in the current organization of a system, insofar as it provides an explanation for the existence of the function bearer and, at the same time, identifies in a non-arbitrary way the norms that functions are supposed to obey. Accordingly, we suggest that the organizational account combines the etiological and dispositional perspectives in an integrated theoretical framework.
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
Mossio_Saborido_Moreno_2009_web.pdf (282.33 Ko) Télécharger le fichier
Origin : Files produced by the author(s)
Loading...

Dates and versions

halshs-00792047 , version 1 (30-03-2015)

Licence

Attribution - NonCommercial

Identifiers

Cite

Matteo Mossio, Cristian Saborido, Alvaro Moreno Bergareche. An Organizational Account of Biological Functions. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 2009, 60 (4), pp.813-841. ⟨10.1093/bjps/axp036⟩. ⟨halshs-00792047⟩
304 View
833 Download

Altmetric

Share

Gmail Facebook Twitter LinkedIn More